The Newsletter, vol. 4 no. 149

MAY DAY, 1960, heralds the greatest possibilities for the working class and socialism since the Russian revolution in 1917. The old empires are cracking. Tens of millions of colonial people are on the move in the vast continent of Africa. All the efforts of American imperialism to impose the rule of Syngman Rhee over the people of South Korea have failed. The passing of this imperialist puppet highlights aa entirely new stage in the ascendancy of the international revolutionary forces.

No one can now deny that these vast movements for liberation are drawn closer and closer to the powerful Labour movements of the metropolitan countries, particularly Britain and the United States. In Cuba, the government of Fidel Castro throws open its doors to the American negro people at a time when the white racialists are being firmly challenged in the deep South. Cuba shows the shape of things to come so far as Wall Street is concerned. The Pentagon diehards are feverishly plotting ways and means to destroy the Castro government, but this will prove just as impossible as the maintenance of the rule of Syngman Rhee in Korea.

The Sharpeville massacre evoked the most powerful demonstration of unity between the British and African people. Large demonstrations and protest meetings rallied tens of thousands of British workers demanding an end to apartheid and action against the South African racialist government. Such solidarity action opens a new chapter in the history of British Labour and its relations with the colonial people.

The colonial revolution is invincible, but it is not enough. For the colonial revolution to be successful, it is necessary that the working class in the metropolitan countries redouble their efforts in the fight against their imperialist masters.

Those responsible for apartheid are the businessmen of the City of London, in whose financial interests the Verwoerd government rules. The main enemy is here in Britain. The way to fight that enemy is to see to it that no supplies whatsoever of goods coming from and going to South Africa should be handled at the docks and airports. Class action. and only class action, can help the South African people.

The more desperate the plight of the imperialists, the more desperate are the measures they will resort to. Cynical American militarists have advised the Tory government that in an H-Bomb war Britain is expendable. ‘Go buy yourself some sand buckets and fire engines,’ they say.

‘Those whom the gods wish to destroy they first drive mad.’ Whilst the Macmillan government totters from crisis to crisis in its defence policy, the most enthusiastic supporters of the H-bomb are to be found amongst the Right-wing of the Labour Party. Gaitskell represents the most reactionary, anti-working class tendencies in the Labour movement. His removal from the position of leader of the Labour Party is now the most important question before the whole Labour movement. For too long these renegades have imposed their bans PPPS PEP EPP PPPPPPPPIPPPPPIPPPPPPPPPPPPPPPPPPPPPPPPPP PPP PPP AO Socialist Labour League Hvde Park Rally 3 p.m. May Day LEAT UTUIAIUUUT Speakers: M. Banda B. Behar R. Pennington Sunday May Ist and proscriptions on the Left wing. Now that their policy has been proved completely bankrupt, the Carrons of the Amalgamated Engineering Union and the Trades Union Congress join hands with Gaitskell in a new plot to renew the witch-hunt against the Left and in particular the Socialist Labour League.

[t was not the policy of the Socialist Labour League which was responsible for the election defeat last October. It was the policy of Gaitskell, Morrison and Attlee which produced that shattering defeat. Clear out the undercover Tory supporters from the leadership of the Labour Party. Lift all bans and proscriptions. Demand that the Socialist Labour League be considered as an affiliated body to the Labour Party to take its rightful place in the development of a socialist Left wing.

pve May Day, 1960, above all else, brings a truly magnificent advance of youth. The long youthful columns of marchers from Aldermasion to Trafalgar Square protesting loudly over the policies of the Labour and Tory Parties have now been joined by tens of thousands of young engineering apprentices who. have gone into action for increases in wages. This is the real voice of the youth who will sHape the future of mankind. It is a powerful rebuff to those who have slandered and accused these young people of laziness and indifference towards the problems of the day.

Youth will provide a powerful force of strength for the adult Labour movement. Above all it wants to learn and to. live. It is in the forefront of the challenge to the H-bomb.

(Continued on page 134)

186 Clapham High Street, London, S.W.4 Telephone Macaulay 7029 SATURDAY, APRIL 30 1960 A Powerful Blow Against Wall Street THE decision of the American-controlled South Korean National Assembly to send Syngman Rhee packing is a desperate attempt to ride the storm of revolt which is gathering increasing momentum. The massacres carried out by South Korea’s police and military last week succeeded in stirring the smouldering embers of discontent into a blazing conflagration. On Tuesday, April 26, 500,000 angry demonstrators marched through Seoul dragging in the dust two public statues of Rhee. Banners smeared with the blood of martyred students called for Rhee to get out now and demanded fresh elections. Last week’s demonstrations were organized by Seoul students to protest at the March 15 election. The American news magazine for March 21, 1960, says of these elections that ‘ballot stuffing and terrorism took on unprecedented proportions.’

The first mass protests at the conduct of the elections took place at Masan. During the demonstration, 16year-old Kim Chu Yul was shot by police and his body tossed into the harbour. Inimediately it was found, Masan became a centre of new anti-Rhee demonstrations. A brewery belonging to a Liberal Party (Rhee’s ruling party) political boss was sacked by demonstrators. Inside they found a mountain of leftover ballot papers all marked for Rhee’s vice-president elect, Lee-Ki-Poong.

From Masan the movement spread to Seoul. The Rhee regime began to crack. Washington had announced that Eisenhower would call on Rhee on his way back from Moscow. This visit was obviously designed to give Rhee’s rapidly waning prestige a much-needed boost. Eisenhower also intended to put pressure on the 85-year-old gangster to modify his overtough policies.

Now, however, the State Department recognizes that it is too late to save Rhee. Alarmed at the rapid spread of the revolt and scared that they might lose an important war base, the Americans have decided Rhee is expendable. The docile American-owned senators in the South Korean Assembly have been prodded into action and told to clear Rhee out. Within no time, former Korean premier Chaing Taik Sang was demanding: ‘Rhee should be told to either retire gracefully or else apologize to the people.’

As the crowd of 500,000 surged through the streets and the flames rose from the burning buildings, the government and the opposition belatedly called on Rhee to resign. He had, and the Assembly knew this, already prepared his resignation.

Some of the students and lecturers are also becoming alarmed at the direction and scope of the revolt. As more and more of the city’s poor join the demonstrations the appeals for ‘order’ go out. Calling for a halt the moderate said: ‘We have won the first round. Let us not destroy what is ours and yours.’

The workers and poor peasants of South Korea want something more than the replacement of Rhee by more ‘democratic’ politicians. The need and desire of the ordinary people of Korea is to secure the reunification of their country. The uprising is not aimed simply at an old tyrant but drives against the forces which have maintained him in power and kept Korea divided.

Two million people died and seven million were rendered homeless during the Korean war. Whole towns and villages were burned to the ground by napalm bomb raids. All this was done with the approval of the Right-wing Labour leaders in Britain who claimed it was to ‘defend democracy.’

The Marxist opposition to the South Korean government and its UNO allies during the war has now received a bloody confirmation by the recent events. America’s decision to call together the nations who fought in the Korean war constitutes the preparations for another war. British Labour must reject this and make clear that it is completely opposed to imperialist intervention in Korea.

British Labour must also do more than cluck with sympathy for the dead and the imprisoned. It must demand the immediate withdrawal of all foreign troops from Korea and express its unconditional support for the Korean people in deciding their own destiny.

(Continued from page 133)

Will the H-bomb destroy mankind, or will youth, in the vanguard of Labour, destroy the H-bomb? To this we have one answer.

Every marcher on the road from Aldermaston who joins hands and supports the struggle of the engineering apprentices on the Clyde is helping to weaken the imperialist warmongers and the politicians who serve them. The way to defeat the H-bomb is to fight the employers. Every struggle for wages and improved living conditions strengthens the working class and weakens the employing class, whose interests are served by the H-bomb.

We warn all those who genuinely desire peace that there will be no peace so long as there is capitalism. The Soviet bureaucracy and the British Communist Party lie when they say that peace will be secured through discussions with the representatives of capitalism. What nonsense it is to suggest that the people responsible for making the H-bomb can be relied upon to get rid of the H-bomb. Those who advise us to take this road want to collaborate with the capitalists at a time when such collaboration can only lead to the destruction of the human race. You cannot separate the fight against the H-bomb from the drive against the Tory government in Britain.

The Socialist Labour League sends greetings to all anti-imperialist fighters throughout the world. We salute the unknown, brave heroes of the African revolution who languish in Verwoerd’s jails. We call upon the British Labour movement to demand their immediate release, Down with apartheid. Down with colonialism. Withdraw all British troops from colonial and semi-colonial territory in the British Commonwealth.

Fight the warmongers by redoubling our struggle against the employers in Britain.

End the ban and proscription on the Socialist Labour League and The Newsletter.

A New Pamphlet on Clause Four From MacDonald to Gaitskell Price 3d. from 186 Clapham High Street, London, S.W.4

THE Midlands Assembly of Labour held in Birmingham last Sunday was attended by delegates, observers and visitors from Derby, Nottingham, Leicester, Coventry and Birmingham.

Despite circulars from the district offices of the Amalgamated Engineering Union, and the National Union of Railwaymen, as well as from the regional organizer of the Labour Party, banning the conference, observers. and delegates attended from many branches of the AEU, two ward Labour Parties and a Young Socialist group. There were also delegates from Wollaton, Notts., branch of the National Union of Mineworkers. Visitors attended from the Nottingham Young Communist League and the Nottingham, Derby and Birmingham branches of the Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament. Young workers from the lace industry, mining, engineering and the railways were there. Students attended from Nottingham: and Birmingham as well as colonial workers.

Opening the Assembly, BOB PENNINGTON said: ‘Gaitskell and the right wing aim to cuiminate every vestige ot so Neariy one and a half million people had died as a result of ialist policy from the Labour Party.

nuclear tests, 100,000 demonstrated against the Bomb last Monday, but still the Labour leaders carried on supporting nethe tragedy of Aldermaston was that the emphasis was ries’ foreign policy.

placed on Summit talks. The demonstration had been turned in the direction of a plea to the Tories. But the force for peace is the international working-class movement and its fight against capitalism. Today the strongest force for peace is the African revolution.’

On the domestic front Pennington pointed out that -he Labour leaders had made one retreat after another. ‘They have nothing to offer the railway workers now living on wages often below subsistence level. No preparations are made to meet future sackings.

‘If the AEU had joined with the building workers, railway ; workers and miners presenting a united demand for higher wages and a 40-hour week, they could have won.’

BILL HOWE, member of the Socialist Society, College of commerce, said we must not patronize the youth but show how politics affect them. Thousands of young people had taken part in the Aldermaston march and in the anti-apartheid struggle.

STEPHEN NXUMALO of South Africa, moved, and ROY WHITTINGHAM of Jamaica, seconded a resolution from the Coventry branch of the Socialist Labour League which said:

‘This Midland Assembly of Labour pledges full solidarity to the colonial revolution and fully supports the struggle of the African masses in their fight against capitalist opP ‘It condemns outright the vicious system of apartheid ression.

which, on the fraudulent grounds of race, attempts to justify the permanent subjection of four-fifths of the South African people to the degraded status of social outcasts and denies all political rights to them for the express purpose of making possible their most brutal economic exploitation in the interests of the City of London financiers and their South African representatives the Verwoerd government.

‘The Assembly calls upon union workers in factories, shop stewards’ committees, trade union branches and Labour Parties to fight for action in support of the African people, the refusal to handle all goods from South Africa at British ports and to stop the export of arms to the South African ;

Stephen Nxumalo explained how Macmillan will have to back Verwoerd to maintain the hold of British imperialism on South Africa. Discussions were taking place on the sending of troops. ‘Sending arms to the African people must be considered by the Labour Party and working-class movement in this country. To the extent that the South African revolution is assisted by the British working class so will the South African people be successful in throwing off the yoke of imperialism,’ he said. By OUR POLITICAL CORRESPONDENT A member of the Coventry Labour Party moved a resolution on Clause Four, which said:

‘This Assembly of Labour considers that working-class interests can only be met by a vigorous struggle by the labour and trade union movement around a socialist programme. It therefore rejects all proposals for the dropping or amendment of Clause Four.

‘This Assembly, therefore, calls on all socialists to fight in local Labour Parties and in their trade union branches 1. The retention of Clause Four. 2. A strengthening of the clause by inclusion in the Labour Party programme of a pledge to nationalize the basic industries without compensation and with full workers’ control.’

STAN WALL, Electrical Trades Union member, Birmingham, declared: ‘The aim of nationalization is to benefit the -working people and we must fight to retain it.’

S. BROWN of Leicester, called for the nationalization of banks and insurance companies. These, he said, were providing the money to finance nuclear wapons.

R. SHAW, Nottingham, said: ‘The need for the retention of Clause 4 was underlined by the take-over of Raleigh Industries by the Tube Investments Ltd., as a result many workers are now wondering about the security of their jobs.’

DON HALLSWORTH, railway worker, made the point that Clause 4 did not need altering but analysing.

Nationalization was not enough. ‘Railwaymen, miners and motor workers should get together and discuss this question and work out common ideas for the effective running of industry. The workers must run the industries.’

FRANK CARTER, Birmingham AEU member, thought it was wrong to call for no compensation ‘since this was not practicable at this stage.’

He had suffered from bans and proscriptions. He had been expelled from the Communist Party for associating with the Militant Workers’ Committee in Birmingham.

Another speaker, secretary of a constituency Labour Party, called on all trade union members to fight within their branches for the retention of Clause 4 and to associate with Labour’s left wing in that struggle.

Replying to the discussion, Bob Pennington pointed out that Tube Investments Ltd. are one of the biggest investors in South Africa. This illustrated the connection between the struggle in the Midlands with that of the South African workers. ‘Workers in Birmingham and Coventry should show their solidarity with the. African workers by picketing the Alvis works where Saracen armoured cars are being made for export to South Africa.’

Speaking about the need to strengthen the Left, he said: “We need to take our programme into the Labour Party and ‘the unions and we shall insist on our right to be in the Labour Party.’

The resolution on Clause 4 was carried with only two voting against. And the Assembly programme agreed with one vote against.

INDUSTRY By Our Industrial Correspondent The apprentices’ strike is now reaching its peak in Scotland. The employers’ action in suspending many of the lads for two or three days has had the effect of stiffening the apprentices’ determination and of arousing the sympathy and support of the aduit In Port Glasgow and Greenock apprentices were locked-out on the day following their token stoppage. As a result the adult workers came out in sympathy. After returning to work to permit the adult workers to go back many lads walked out again after being in the yards for only one hour.

The main efforts of the Apprentices’: Committee will now be directed to spreading the stoppage to England. English apprentices have been invited to send delegates to an apprentices’ conference to be held this Saturday in Glasgow.

The strength and support the strike has gained has embarrassed the Right-wing union leaders. They will not openly DEMAND IMMEDIATE

At a meeting of Clyde shop stewards, held in Glasgow today, delegates from 130 factories and yards agreed to take certain steps in support of the striking Clyde apprentices.

They have agreed to take the maximum collections for the apprentices. Next Wednesday the stewards will recommend to all Clyde workers that they stop work at 3 p.m. for a demonstration from Blythswood Square to Glasgow Green.

The stewards will also recommend at next Wednesday’s meetings that workers should refuse overtime.

support the lads, but nor dare they openly agitate against the strike because it is unofficial. The national leaders of the Amalgamated Engineering Union have to date maintained a sphinx-like silence, while the local officials have been touring the yards in an endeavour to persuade the boys not to come out.

At last week’s Scottish Trades Union Congress, Ted Hill of the Boilermakers, and Jarvie of the Blacksmiths’ Union, both made statements in support of the apprentices. Whilst this is to be welcomed, the apprentices are entitled to ask Mr. Hill and others if they intend to demonstrate their support.

The apprentices cannot live on statements. Will Ted Hill and other union leaders who claim to support the boys give them strike pay? Will they 2sk for a national weekly levy from their members and urge the Confederation of Shipbuilding and Engineering Unions to mobilize the entire movement behind the apprentices? This means getting cash for the lads and holding token stoppages in their support.

The usual ‘red plot’ scare has been dished up by the press, designed to create dissension and disunity amongst the apprentices. This has had its effect on the committee who have decided not to allow any of its members to write for any political paper on the dispute. This applies to Labour Party, Communist Party and Socialist Labour League publications.

What the more astute employers are frightened of is the rapid growth of political ideas amongst the apprentices. And with good reason. A victory for the apprentices can only be won with a political leadership which will consciously extend the strike and will develop a unity amongst both apprentices and adults.

By Our Industrial Correspondent At 5.30, April 28, 1,800 lift and crane engineers employed by Otis Elevators, came out on strike. The men who work on service, construction and in the factory, are striking for the right to negotiate with the management direct through their joint shop stewards’ committee.

In the autumn of 1959, the London construction department of Otis lodged a claim with the management for a sixpence per hour wage increase. This was rejected by the firm. The Electrical Trade Union then advised the men to postpone their claim until the national wage claim was settled.

During the next few months, the stewards in the construction, made approaches to the stewards in the factory and in the service department, and eventually a joint shop stewards’ committee was established.

Demanded increase After the granting in February by the employers of the 42-hour week, and their rejection of the national wage claim, the stewards then demanded a substantial wage increase.

In reply to the men’s claim, Otis said that they were prepared to meet only representatives of the separate departments. Naturally the stewards rejected this, considering that the employer was trying to divide the men.

Strike notice A mass meeting of April 1 then decided to give Otis three weeks to meet the joint representatives of all the departments, including stewards from the Liverpool depot. It was agreed by 800 votes to two, in both Liverpool and London, to take strike action to enforce their rights to negotiate through their joint committee.

Harry Hope, steward at the new Daily Mirror site, Holborn, told me on Friday morning: ‘We feel we have a very good case. Last year, Otis profits shot up by 45 per cent. and the firm made £1,000,000.

‘Having made a million, Otis are now determined to make another million this year out of us, but we have no intention of that happening at our expense.

‘Over the last few months we have built up unity throughout all the departments and between Liverpool and London. The men realise that this strengthens their position enormously and will resist every attempt of the firm to split and divide us.

‘We shall, of course, apply immediately for this strike to be made official by the union,’ said Brother Hope.

Fine example This strike sets a fine example to the rest of the trade union movement, not waiting for the usual platitudes and evasions from the employers the men have taken offensive action to secure their negotiating rights.

Lift workers employed by other manufacturers in the industry will recognize the importance of this dispute to them. No doubt the Otis workers will make every attempt to extend inter-department unity from their own firm to other firms in the industry.

The growing opposition in the Labour Party to Gaitskell’s anti-nationalization plans, is finding many allies in the trade union movement.

Branches of the NUVB, AEU, ETU, CAWU, AESD, and ASSET as well as many constituency Labour Parties and Young Socialist organizations will be represented at the Conference being called by the Clause Four Campaign Committee at Caxton Hall on May 5.

The Political Committee of the National Union of Vehicle Builders is sending observers, and enquiries have been received from as far afield as Luton.

This was announced at a press conference last night by Councillor Jack Lewis, chairman of the Campaign Committee. Cllr. Lewis is secretary of 1 P.E. branch, AEU, and an executive member of the North Paddington Labour Party.

‘If you destroy Clause Four, you destroy the Labour Party,’ declared Cllr. Lewis, who pointed out that his own union was committed to nationalization. ‘When you cease to believe in nationalization, you cease to be a socialist.’

Support from ASSET The secretary of the Committee, Councillor Ron Spurway, read a message of support from Clive Jenkins and quoted from an ASSET (technicians) publication ‘In Defence of Clause Four.’

‘The attempt to abandon Clause Four is a continuation of the policies which has led to three successive election defeats,’ he went on.

Referring to the acceptance of the new addendum by the leadership of Victory for Socialism, Councillor Spurway pointed out that the executive of the Labour Party had decided on this without any consultation with the party members.

The Clause Four Campaign Committee intends to take the fight into the ranks of the party and into the trade union branches.

As Jack Lewis said, ‘We will work in the ranks of the trade unions for a more militant Labour Party. We will organize the maximum opposition to this attempt to water down Labour’s constitution. The Committee will campaign for resolutions to the Labour Party and Trade Union Conferences which call clearly for the retention of Clause Four, with no alteration whatsoever.

Speakers requested Already the Committee has been asked to send speakers to trade union branches and local Labour Parties, and they are getting in touch with Shop Stewards’ Committees. And they have heard that similar movements are springing up in other parts of the country.

Labour Parties, union branches, factory organizations can here unite in the decisive fight against the opponents of socialism at present in the leadership of the Labour Movement.

Footnote. The press was asked to report that any Labour Party, Tade Union Branch, Young Socialist Branch or Factory Committee which wishes to contact the Clause Four Campaign Committee should write to its secretary: Councillor Ron. Spurway, 163 Courtenay Avenue, Harrow Weald, Middlesex.

AS the Socialist Labour League contingent entered Trafalgar Square at the end of the march from Aldermaston, I heard a speaker from the plinth sounding :ff about the unimportance of ‘politics’ compared with the fight against the H-bomb. My local paper for April 22 reports, however, that the Finchley Youth Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament has been classified as ‘political’ by the local Council of Youth, and on this ground refused affiliation thereto. The Youth Campaigners are indignant.

In one of the novels of J. B. Priestley (husband of our redhatted leader on the great march, Jacquetta Hawkes) a character explains that, where he lives, ‘Toryism doesn’t count as politics; it is just the normal, decent thing, and only ideas that in some way jar on Tories are regarded as “political”.

There are a lot of places where that outlook still prevails, and our good friends in the CND will find they can’t overcome it by pretending to be ‘non-political’ and ostentatiously avoiding any special attention to the working-class movement. On the contrary, they will by so doing merely strengthen its hold.

Old Acquaintance Not Forgot During the Aldermaston March this year I caught a glimpse of an old associate of student days, Dick Freeman, now a well-known worker for the British Peace Committee, which seeks to convince us all that Summit conferences are the answer to the danger of war. I wonder what he thinks now of the ideas he expounded in his contribution to the book “Young Oxford and War’ (1934), which he wrote as a representative Communist student, one of the founders of the October Club of famous memory?

‘Whilst recognizing that imperialist wars are inevitable under capitalism, the Communists attempt, in the interests of the workers who bear the brunt of any war, to prevent war by proletarian revolution. It is for this reason’ (wrote young Freeman) ‘that vague phrases of a pacifist nature are condemned. Not only must the real issues involved in war be clearly exposed, but also the only means of preventing war.’

It is an interesting and important problem how men like Freeman, who were, or thought they were, revolutionaries in 1931-1934, could be transformed into increasingly conscious opponents of revolution from 1935 onward. Part of the explanation is certainly to be found in the distorted and vulgarised character of the ‘Marxism’ they were fed by the alreadyStalinized Communist Party during the early 1930s. Hearing some Young Socialists on the march chanting (to the tune of ‘Solidarity forever} ‘We'll make John Strachey read the books he used to write’, I understood what they meant, but it struck me, too, that one needs to look critically at the doctrines preached in “The Coming Struggle for Power’, ‘The Menace of Fascism’ and ‘The Nature of Capitalist Crisis’. To some extent the Left mistakes of the early 1930s prepared the way, through the clash between theory and reality which became more and more apparent, for the Rightward retreats in the second half of that decade.

One other thing that should never be lost sight of in studying the history of now-middle-aged cadres of Stalinism in Britain is that these men and women serve and always have served not the British capitalist class but the bureaucratic rulers of the Soviet Union, with whose interests they identify those of the world’s workers. Their allegiance has sometimes brought them into conflict with the entire capitalist class, sometimes into collaboration with one section against another, but always there has been conflict—and there must always be, for reasons we can explain better than they can!

More About a Burglary Since my remarks the other week, for Christopher Hill’s benefit, about the burglary of Trotsky’s archives by Soviet police agents in 1936, a friend has shown me an article by

'Why NATO?' the latest Victory for Socialism pamphlet by Harold Davies, is an extremely valuable and informative document for socialists. Davies shows how: 'American big business naturally has a vested interest in an economy which spends astronomical sums on arms, and gives them power in the munitions lobby greater than that of the Ballot Box.'

Last year, Eisenhower asked Congress for 3,929,995,000 dollars for foreign aid and 62 per cent. of that was for military aid. Eisenhower added: 'Over two-thirds of this sum will be used for Turkey, Vietnam, Taiwan and Korea.' The bodies of the 160 dead students in Seoul testify how useful Syngman Rhee has found his share of military aid from the USA.

The so-called Military Security Programme and NATO are designed, as Davies explains, 'to draw the under-privileged areas into the orbit of the Cold War' resulting in 'a world-wide network of subsidised clients and reactionary regimes.'

American military aid has resulted in bigger and better profits for American business. Since MSP was established it has financed 'purchases for over 7 billion dollars of surplus agriculture products.' Eighty cents out of every dollar spent under the MSP is spent in the United States.

In Asia, one of the chief 'beneficiaries' of Military Security, the gap between the 'Haves and Have-nots' is wider now than pre-war. Rice output in 'Free Asia' is up 18 per cent., population has, however, grown by 27 per cent.

Davies quotes the chairman of the American House of Representatives, Clarence Canon, who said: 'We wouldn't have to spend near the money we do if it were not for the lobbyists and munition makers. They thrive on wars and the threat of wars. If we declared peace, they would go broke.'

The war drive of American imperialism produces, as Davies shows, the most fantastic and lunatic policies: 'Professor Frederick Edmondson, of Cornell University, has planned out a city of 9,000 chosen people, whose lives with that of their children would be lived underground to perhaps the fifth generation.

'This is to be built beneath the limestone and granite of New York's Schoraie County. The chosen ones are to be the survivors of the nuclear war. They are to live that way, war or no war.'

Presumably all the 9,000 will have good bank deposits, lots of patience and suitably moronic temperaments.

The Methodist Recorder sees a glow of light for Christians in the Fylingdales Moor warning project. Not only will Fylingdales 'mean more employment for local people', but, says the Recorder, it will mean 'larger congregations at the Methodist churches' and 'a general strengthening of Methodist life in the area.'

As Davies explains: 'German industry and German militarists are now more closely associated with the German government than at any time except under Hitler.'

Davies correctly emphasizes the 'questionable methods' employed at the Labour Party conference in 1954 to force the conference to accept German rearmament. This resulted in a strengthening of Adenauer and his reactionary regime and a weakening of the German Social Democratic Party. This policy will make German capitalism 'the most powerful military force in NATO by 1962'.

For Britain, nuclear policy and NATO will mean absolute destruction. The Army League set up a study group to consider the future role and needs of the British army. Number 9 of its conclusions reads: 'Today, if continental West Europe were over-run the hope of salvaging the United Kingdom from the ruins would be almost negligible.' As NATO Comamnder 1951-52, Eisenhower said: 'We are not going to fight a ground war in Europe.'

The weakness of Harold Davies' pamphlet lies in its conclusions. Whilst recognizing NATO as an agency of American imperialism he fails to recognize the similar role of the United Nations Organization. This faith in UNO is contradicted by the military intervention in Korea and its 'statesmanlike' policy of non-interference and neutralism in Guatemala and British Guiana.

What follows from this exposure of imperialism, so ably done by Davies, is the need to strengthen the fight against both the Tories and the Right-wing Labour leaders. This means Labour's Left-wing joining forces with the industrial working class in Britain and the colonial revolution, because these are the only forces that can destroy Toryism and its war pacts.

incident.

Dallin’s article is based on evidence given by Mark Zborowski, a Soviet spy detected in the United States, who turned out to have been for some time an informer working inside the Trotskyist organization in Paris. He writes: ‘In the fall of 1936, fifteen bundles of Trotsky’s archives were transferred (with Zborowski’s help) to the International Institute of Social History. Here the NKVD (Soviet secret police) later MVD, outdid itself. In its eagerness to make a gift to Stalin on the anniversary of the Bolshevik Revolution, NKVD men broke into the Institute on the night of November 7, 1936, and stole the 15 bundles. The rest of the archives, which contained the most valuable documents, had not yet been transferred.

‘Zborowski was unhappy about this. In the first place it was a piece of unfinished business. Secondly, it could expose him. Today he tells this story: “When I heard about the burglary, I rushed to my NKVD chief and vehemently protested, because this could expose me as a spy. Only four persons knew the archives whereabouts. I was one of them; the three others were out of the question. The answer I received was: ‘We never inform our agents about a forthcoming operation because, being nervous, they may betray us. Besides, we had to get hold. of the documents that night in order to make our present to Stalin.’”’

. BRIAN PEARCE oe:

Published by The Newsletter, 186 Clapham High St., London, SW4 Registered at the GPO as a newspaper Constructional workers on power stations, such as Bradwell and Belvedere now have their own paper— ‘Powerhouse.’

Aimed at putting forward the point of view of the man on the job, the first edition of ‘Powerhouse’ appeared this month. Written completely by rank-and-file constructional workers, this lively six-page paper seems assured of a popular reception on the jobs.

One of the paper’s main articles—‘Unofficial Strikes’. denounces the ‘press campaign against strikes, which has been increased because some trade union leaders have seen fiit to join it.

The editorial attacks the present witch-hunters of the Electrical Trade Union and comments: ‘Those who took the ETU fight outside the union have brought little credit om themselves or on the movement.’

A useful column is one by John Delver which reports on new jobs opening and other prospects of work.

Readers of the Newsletter interested in obtaining a copy of ‘Powerhouse’, can do so by sending sixpence to Bert Hayes, 12 Westbourne Close, Hockley, Essex.

., Printed by Plough Press Ltd. (TU), r.o. 180 Clapham High St, London SW4